The fortieth day since my grandfather’s repose is approaching, and my grandmother had preceded him by about eight months. She preceded him to prepare for him a place and a table in the house to which Jesus ascended to prepare for us with His Father in the heavens””In My Father’s house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you”” (Jn 14:2). And just as she used to prepare for him the table of food before his return every evening, she went to prepare for him a table before his repose.
These two elders were neither thinkers nor intellectuals nor from families of luxury; rather, they were the children of simple village families. But what distinguished them is that they gave of themselves.
My grandfather was illiterate, and after his return from Lebanon in the 1990s he owned a shop which he had opened in our village Al-Mashlouha on Mount Al-Sayeh. This shop was a source of abundant livelihood for the family. At the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011, and after the deterioration of the economic situation, prices began to rise every day as we had grown accustomed to, and the seller had to raise his prices in proportion to the prices of the goods. But for some reason he refused this, and his state of mind seemed to say: “I sell as I buy, and I do not deceive people.” We all tried to convince him of the necessity of raising his prices so that he would not lose his capital at least, but he refused, and he actually began to lose his goods gradually, insisting on his principle. In the end he closed his shop having lost everything, because he walked by his principle to the very end.
This event, in its simplicity, is essential. It tells us that he paid the price of his principles, even if it cost him all that he owned, even his future. What matters is not what the end is — bankruptcy, death, brokenness, or disappointment with the very society for which he sacrificed by his saying (I do not deceive people) and his insistence on his principle.
But what matters is that he was a man of principle. He did not do this out of the ignorance of illiteracy, for the ignorant man, my friend, does not become a merchant. And, my friend, in the eye of the world this is failure, but in the eye of God this is everything — this precious jewel.
Was not Christ, the greatest Teacher, likewise? He gave Himself for the sake of the principle and the cause for which He came into the world. Did He not die for what He believed in? He believed in one truth alone: the human being, his cause, and his salvation. Did Christ not die in the end, killed by the very society itself? Christ failed according to the world’s standard, for Capernaum did not believe in Him despite all the miracles He worked in it, and His village Nazareth did not believe in Him, and the very religious authority that believes in God in words killed Him, and demanded the crucifixion of Him who came to save them. Christ was crucified by His principle and His cause before man crucified Him, and He was crucified in power before being crucified by us in deed; but the Father was pleased with Him. The Teacher Jesus, my friend, was crucified by His principle and His cause.
Yet Christ’s first success lies not in having completed the message, but in having carried it, and this suffices for each of us. Even if he does not succeed in his message, in God’s eye it suffices that he carry it to the end. John the Baptist carried the message and became a “voice crying out”; what mattered was not who listened to the voice “in the wilderness”. What matters, my friend, is that you accept the crying out in the wilderness where there is neither companion nor spirit, and this, my friend, is the madness of God.
My grandfather lost everything — a building he had built and a secure future — for the sake of a principle he believed in.
As for my grandmother, I recall an essential chapter. At the beginning of my priesthood, and because of the reality of our scattered parishes in the valley and the absence of public transportation, the priest needed a car to carry him, and I did not own its price at that time. My grandmother said: ”I will not let you go and come carrying your parishioners”. Then she went and brought all the money she had, and what she had saved in her account over decades, and gave it to me in full to buy my car, leaving in her account only pennies so that the account would not be closed.
She gave what was “hers” so that I might be free with what was “mine”. She gave what the elderly call “the savings of the hereafter” — that which they gather for the last years of their lives, fearing illness or pain, that is, fearing need. She practically renounced her security and her reassurance; she renounced her reassurance so that I might be reassured, she renounced her need to meet my need. She accepted to need someone to provide for her in her last days so that I would not be in need in my present. She renounced her future to secure my present. She renounced because she loved, and this, my friend, is self-giving to the point of annihilation.
This is what Jesus meant: take up your cross and follow Me. The cross is a cause and a principle.
The two of them have fallen asleep like every human being upon whom death was written. Their present and their reality have ended, but they became present in God’s reality and dwelt in His eternal future. And I am certain that the future which both of them abandoned — their security and their guarantee for the sake of the present of others — God granted them in return an eternal future and an eternal guarantee. They abandoned all that they had and gained “Him”; one of them abandoned for a principle he believed in and the other for a love she embraced, so God became for both of them the eternal principle and guarantee. Such are people, my friend: no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve, for they are alive with their Lord and are provided for.
Man, my friend, dies when he abandons his principles, so God abandons him and he becomes one of those over whom they grieve. Let us then take heed together, my friend, that our memory may be made everlasting.